


Jersey Wandering - An EMH AU

by awfulwings



Category: Everyman HYBRID
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Apocalypse, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Possession
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:27:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28209039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awfulwings/pseuds/awfulwings
Summary: Infected beings have risen to haunt the planet, all controlled by a mysterious entity. All the while, four very different and unexpecting people must learn to work together to find the thing behind this mess, and more importantly, survive (an EverymanHYBRID apocalypse AU).
Kudos: 11





	1. Rifled and Ransacked

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to whatever this is, and wherever it may go... But first, a few quick notes!
> 
> Some content warnings to be aware of throughout the series: 
> 
> -Graphic depictions of violence  
> -Amputation/loss of limb  
> -Blood, scars, wounds + gore  
> -Illness/medical tools + themes
> 
> And I have a playlist to match with this AU if you'd like some background music!  
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3bF4IfDHv38g52pMRNgGLc

The world awakens before Vinny does. 

Things are moving, sounds echo and lights flicker, while he's still half unconscious and trying to process it all. 

The last thing that Vinny can remember is heading into the storage room to get ready to close up shop. It was a dull and lonely late shift at the movie rental store, and barely anyone had even come in. But now where was I? He thought to himself. Still in the storage room? 

His vision gradually stopped swirling and he took a moment to observe the surroundings. The door to the storage room was closed, and no light came from underneath it, which worried him. He hadn't turned the main lights off since that shift. As Vinny slowly pushed himself upright with his hands was when he realized what else had changed. 

"Ow!" 

Vinny swiped his hand up off of the floor, and examined his now bleeding palm. There was glass scattered all across the floor of the room, and the single window in the storage room had been shattered. 

It's then that Vinny notices something even more concerning. The large, steel storage shelves are toppled over, supplies and stock spilled over everywhere. But underneath the shelving is a pair of legs. Without another thought, he scrambles over to the mess of boxes and steel, paying no mind to the sharp shards covering most of the ground and begins to shove things out of the way in an attempt to dig out the other. 

While tossing boxes and shelving aside, Vinny starts to doubt if this person is even alive. From what little he can already see of the body so far is frightening enough. The one visible leg sticking out from the wreckage is mangled and littered with scratch marks. Vinny holds down a gag. 

Enough scraps are now shoved aside for him to get a better look at the victim trapped beneath. Vinny holds down yet another gag and looks away before turning back for a double take at the body. The rest of the body is just as torn and scratched up as the glimpse Vinny had gotten earlier, except there's much more wrong now that he can see everything. They're missing both an arm and a leg, but there's no sign of the detached limbs anywhere. 

Vinny steps back and averts his gaze to the source of the broken glass. A window, in fact the only window in the storage room, which just so happened to be right atop the fallen shelves.

Still utterly confused, Vinny decides to go grab the first aid kit from behind the store counter. In the small chance that this person is still alive, maybe it'd be worth a try to patch them up a bit before they regain consciousness?  
Stepping carefully over the scattered specks of glass towards the door, Vinny rested his hand on the door knob out of the storage room before looking back one last time towards the unconscious body. It hadn't moved. Well, duh. Vinny shook his head to himself before twisting the doorknob and walking through the doorway. 

Somehow the storage room looked far nicer compared to the actual store. All of the windows had been smashed open, the tiled floor was chipped almost like a checkerboard, and the counter was splattered with blood, but with no source. To Vinny, it looked like it had been transformed into one of those over-the-top halloween attractions from his childhood. Just how long had Vinny been knocked out in the back? Things like this just don't happen overnight. 

He then carefully walked with shaky knees over and under fallen ceiling beams, toppled display cases, and the like all the way to the counter. It smelled horrid, and rightfully so with the amount of blood and other bodily bits covering its surface. 

Slowly crouching down behind the counter, he noticed just how much his hands were twitching from shock. There was just too much to take in at the moment. He took a deep breath that slightly weighed him down into this strange and new reality. 

While digging out the first aid kit from inside a drawer, he spotted the phone next to the smashed up register. He quickly picked it up off the stand and frantically began to dial the emergency number that had been engraved into his brain since he was young. He clumsily fumbled the phone up to his ear and did his best to hold it there as still as possible as he waited.

But the phone didn't ring. 

Vinny took the phone away from his ear and looked down at it in his hand. Of course, the power's out. He tightened his grip on the useless device and tossed it down onto the floor, holding his head in both hands. 

A sound coming from the storage room shook Vinny back to his senses. A clamber of metal, boxes and the shimmering crinkling of glass could be heard before an unfamiliar voice cursed loudly in a howl. 

Without another word, Vinny quickly got up again, grabbing the first aid kit on his way back to the storage room door and through the doorway where he skidded to a stop to view the source. Whoever it had been who Vinny had dug out from beneath the wreckage was now standing up and leaning against the back wall underneath the window. 

It was only now that Vinny saw their face clearly, under the dim flickering ceiling light. He wore a confused and fearful face. But over all other things he looked pained.  
"Hey. Looks like you took quite the fall there." Vinny said, walking up to the other.

"Get away from me!" They yelled, and without another word they began to attempt to climb back up through the shattered glass window above. 

"I was just going to help you. You know, for a while I was sure you were dead already." 

"Might as well be." The other huffed, trying to get his one good leg high up enough to reach the ledge. Vinny stood in silence for a moment. Why would anyone in that state refuse help? It was completely beyond him. 

Vinny suddenly snapped out of his troubling thoughts, stepping forward to help this strange person up and out of the window. If they were refusing his honest help, what more could be done? He slowly helped in lifting their good leg up, allowing them to get a good grip on the outside of the window frame with one arm and shimmying through the opening. As he swung his leg out of the frame, Vinny noticed as he frantically looked around him, then locking eyes with Vinny. 

"You wanted to help me, huh?" He called down. Vinny swiftly gave him a sincere nod. "Well, that kit's empty. This whole store was ransacked last week." The two stared at each other down for a little while longer. "Oh come on. Don't tell me you don't know why!" 

"I don't." Vinny spat out. He felt terror fill his body as he dropped the empty kit. The hollow plastic casing clattered at his feet, and he wrapped his arms around himself in a false sense of protection. 

There was an even longer and far more terrifying bout of silence between the two. Although neither could look at each other, there was a sense of vision into the other's momentary thoughts. Vinny closed his eyes and swayed, trying to shift his thoughts somewhere else. His weight swayed like a tree from one foot to the other, then back once more.

"My name's Evan, by the way." 

Vinny slowly opened his eyes but kept them glued to the floor and the empty kit. "I'm Vinny."

"Come on, there's somewhere we can rest for a few hours up ahead. I'll need help getting there, obviously." Evan said, his voice laced with a layer of sincerity that made Vinny feel somewhat safer. When he looked back up at the window, Evan was smiling down on him. "I can explain everything once we're there." 

Vinny nodded. It sounded better than being clueless and alone in this rotting hellhole. He walked over to the window frame and pulled himself up and through it as Evan shuffled back to make room. He expected fresh air to ripple through his lungs, but was met with dense clouds of dust and smoke instead. He coughed violently, clutching his chest.  
Evan looked up at the sky, trying to ignore Vinny's coughing. It was like his way of silently telling him he'd just have to get used to it, as he had. The once lively streets were dead. Cars were overturned and scattered in the middle of the roads, every window in sight was smashed to bits, and no one else in sight. 

Vinny stood up and silently took it all in while Evan sat with his back against the wall, watching his expressions. He remembered feeling this way once before way too well. 

"Let's get going." Vinny said, quickly coming back to his senses. Evan allowed himself to be picked up by the taller of the two, his head hanging off of Vinny's back, and his chest planted on his shoulder. It wasn't comfortable, but he didn't want to hinder their progress. They needed to move fast before nightfall. 

Evan gave simple directions to Vinny, occasionally pivoting his head to look forward to point out the next turns, and tracking their progress while looking behind. The journey was mostly silent apart from that.

Vinny decided to break the silence to distract himself from the fact that his legs were growing increasingly numb from the cold wind, and Evan's weight was slowly starting to do the same to his shoulder. "Why were you in the storage room if you knew the place didn't have anything in it?" 

It didn't take much to let Vinny know that maybe that question hadn't been such a great conversation starter, because nothing came out of Evan for several minutes after. 

"None of your business." He muttered. 

"Sorry." Vinny huffed, trudging down a sharp incline of tall grass and into a deeply forested area. The trees brought about a much more pleasant smell, but the scent of the city streets still lingered in the back of their senses. 

He decided to enjoy the silence instead while it lasted. Maybe conversation would have to wait until later.


	2. Cave Dwelling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a mysterious encounter, Evan introduces Vinny to his makeshift home and some hard-to-swallow answers are drawn out.

Evan faded in and out of sleep for the rest of the journey, Vinny waking him every so often to ask for directions, or to ask how much farther it would be. 

As much as he thought he'd like the old silence he was used to while travelling on his own for the past two weeks, Vinny's voice was soothing and he needed it more than he would admit. The only other voice he had heard this vividly since the beginning of this mess was his own. 

The constant jostling of being carried over someone else's shoulder was making him immensely dizzy, and he thought about asking Vinny to stop so he could reorient himself, but there wasn't any time for that crap. The sun was already starting to lower beneath the brush, and the canopy of the forest was swirling with setting fog. Soon, as always, Jersey would plunge into a cold, momentary darkness. 

As he was staring down with droopy eyes at the passing patches of wildflowers, Vinny made a startled sound. He gently shook his head up, grimacing at the following headache. 

Vinny stopped in his tracks and held his breath, Evan following suit. Ahead of them, standing stilted was a deer. Its antlers collide with the low hanging branches of the tree sheltering the creature from above. They move gently with the wind as the deer looks about in the distance, away from the two wanderers. 

"The knife in my shoe. Grab it-" Evan whispered.

"I'm not going to kill it!" Vinny whispered back, his eyes glued on the creature.

Vinny's eyes glared ahead, and without hesitation he kicked at the tall grass, and the deer immediately bolted off into the brush without even a glance. 

Evan watched as the deer zigzagged around trees and under low branches. "Great, now everyone knows where we are." 

"What do you mean everyone?" Vinny asked, picking up pace again. 

"I still can't believe you have no idea what's going on. You can drop the act now, if you want" he snickered.

"I'm serious, Evan! What the hell is going on?" The confused desperation in Vinny's voice was enough to scare Evan out of his little laughing fit. He wasn't expecting to actually have to explain all this and now he definitely wished he was planning his words instead of dozing off during the journey.

"Zombies, Vinny. Zombies would find us."  
This bout of silence was even more deadly than the last. Evan wasn't sure if Vinny had gone into some state of shock and was just walking ahead because it was all he could do to distract himself, or if he just didn't care. He wasn't sure which he would rather it be. 

Only half an hour later and Evan was tapping Vinny's shoulder to grab his attention. He pointed ahead to a short, narrow opening in a cliffside. The trees opened up a bit more as they approached the rocky wall, allowing the last stretch of sun to gently rest on the backs of their necks. Vinny set Evan down against a nearby tree and immediately began to massage his own shoulder, turning away from Evan to do so. 

Evan pulled himself closer to the opening, observing every little detail. This was definitely it. He brushed his hand along the cracks above the small cave, remembering the feel of the exposed stone when he had last been here. He then turned his attention to the ground beneath him, and his face immediately dropped. 

"We can't be here," he stated in a panic, "someone's been through here before us and it wasn't me." 

Vinny walked over to where Evan was looking. He titled his head at him in question.

"I left some sticks at the opening, arranged in some sort of pattern. One that only I would recognize. They're gone." 

"Maybe the wind moved them... " Vinny said calmly, trying to lighten the mood. 

"Sure, let's go with that." Evan huffed, lugging himself inside the opening while Vinny followed from behind. 

The cave’s opening started wide, but became more and more narrow as they crawled through the space. The sound of dripping water echoed through the small tunnel, and their ragged exhales became visible in the cold darkness. After only a few minutes, the once narrow path opened up into a hauntingly large cavern. Stalactites and stalagmites protruded from both ceiling and floor in a teeth-like pattern. Darkness encased large patches of the cave, and a few lanterns scattered over the floor produced much smaller patches of illumination. 

As Vinny stood up to better take in the sight, he noticed many belongings, mostly knives and canned food rations scattered across the smooth parts of the cave floor. Tattered blankets were set up in a few areas overtop the cold ground. 

Evan had already made his way over to a tent set up not too far away from the entrance. It had blankets tossed over it for insulation, and light from a lantern inside seeped through them. 

“How long have you been living here?” Vinny asked, shuddering from the cold interior of the rocky cave walls.   
“A little over a month now” he said, crawling inside the tent. Vinny struggled to believe that, seeing as how cold the cave was. He was noticing more and more just how frozen his arms were beginning to feel. He instinctively pulled his flannel shirt closed and tucked his arms around himself as he paced over to the tent. 

“I wish I could explain things better to you, man” Evan said, watching Vinny with wide eyes as he ducked inside and took a seat on a pillow. Vinny chuckled nervously in reply, watching as the other pulled the knife out of his shoe, observing it closely. “One day it was just like any other day, and then the next I was running for my life.” 

Vinny looked down at his hands, pinching each of his fingers with his index and thumb in a frantic manner. “A whole damn month... I find it really hard to believe I was knocked out on the floor for that long. I mean, sure it’s possible, but sheesh.” 

Evan nodded, setting the knife down by his side. “It’s almost like waking up in a movie, yeah?”

“Exactly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh finally found the motivation to update this... Good shit!

**Author's Note:**

> Updates will be whenever I get the motivation for it, sadly. But hey, hyperfixations are pretty powerful so who knows?


End file.
